1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a phonographic turntable which includes a built-in audio conversion device, which is typically to USB, firewire, or other computer digital communication protocol, inside the turntable.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The standard phonographic turntable, as an analog device, is diminishing in commercial popularity due to the ever increasing capabilities of digital music equipment. Digital music equipment has many advantages in that it can be either connected directly to a home computer or can play music through a common storage device (such as a compact disk). However, the standard phonographic turntable is still embedded within the popular music culture, at least for the reason that many people still own vinyl LPs which may be difficult or even impossible to replace with compact disks. Similarly, the standard phonographic turntable is embedded within the disk jockey culture at dance clubs and similar institutions.
Some applications have connected the line level output of a turntable (or the output of a phono pre-amp which has received the audio output from the phono cartridge) to the analog input of a computer sound card. Other applications have used an external audio conversion device between the turntable and the soundcard.
In addition, there are currently several devices that allow the phonographic turntable to act as a control device, similar to a computer mouse, to modulate or apply some effect (such as “scratching”) to audio playing within the computer.
The SPDIF (Sony/Phillips Digital Interface) has been built into some turntables in order to provide a digital output. However, this is not a standard protocol such as USB (universal serial bus) or firewire (IEEE 1394).